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Comment by cstever | Hacker News Reader

>Take, for example, speeches. I do not let AI write my speeches. But my speeches are better for having been critiqued by AI. But the result is still my speech. My thoughts, my ideas, my words, and my meaning. Just improved with rounds of feedback about where it fell flat, where I was likely to lose people, and so on. Feedback that I had to fix.

> So do not let AI write your speeches. But do use it to push yourself harder.

This used to be the job of our friends, families, and coworkers: To push us harder. I think we are losing something.

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Odd. I never had any friends, families, or coworkers who were willing to be available for a dozen rough drafts. I've only had ones who were willing to talk during the idea stage, or after it was closer to a final speech.

For me, AI gives me feedback at places that I wouldn't have received it before. It does not replace the human feedback that I still look for.

Less about the draft/writing and more about human interaction on all levels. I don't see how AI becoming a mentor or a coach to push me harder is helpful in the long run. I would be missing out on opportunity to learn from real life experience. I'd rather listen to my brother or my coworker or whomever human, pick their brain, riff, dig deeper, understand their perspective from life experiences and actual meaningful thought and moral compass than have AI (take intelligence with a grain of salt) influence me.

I just acted as an amateur editor for my friend's new novel. It took a long time to get through with hundreds or thousands of minor corrections and notes. I'm certain I outperformed an LLM for a lot of that in terms of quality.

You don’t need to outperform an LLM tho. The experience of working on it together is incredibly meaningful.

I generally reject this litmus test that someone has to be “better” and an LLM in order for the human interaction and effort to be worthwhile.

You’re now part of the journey of this novel. They will thank you in the acknowledgements section. It’s this foundation upon which our lives, communities, culture and societies are built.

You do not need to be better. This act you did for a friend is not suddenly pointless and meaningless upon the release of the next model.

> You’re now part of the journey of this novel. They will thank you in the acknowledgements section. It’s this foundation upon which our lives, communities, culture and societies are built.

Beautifully said.

I think this is what the poem is all about. Some people (bizarrely, in my opinion) sometimes focus on whether AI is good enough or whether it lets them be more productive with their projects, in some mad rush to optimize life. But I think that's a red herring, and I think so does the poem's author.

Why can’t they continue to do so?

If anything an underlying truth about humanity is being exposed: we take the easy way out far more often than we’d like to admit.

Perhaps, this truth being made explicit is a wakeup call that will teach us the value of that hard work anew.

After all, nothing the author’s written isn’t also true about Google, but nobody realized how bad of a mistake that was.

> Why can’t they continue to do so?

Because we are talking to the AIs instead of talking to them.

> After all, nothing the author’s written isn’t also true about Google, but nobody realized how bad of a mistake that was.

There was plenty written about how Google was making us dumber because we didn't need to remember anything any more.

> instead of

Citation needed. People did not stop talking to family, friends and colleagues just because they're able to leverage LLMs.

> People did not stop talking to family, friends and colleagues just because they're able to leverage LLMs.

Which people? There are clearly people who did—some with catastrophic, newsworthy results, but presumably more without.

No, they stopped talking to family, friends and colleagues because they got addicted to social media algorithms.

and other forms of multi-media before that.

Not everyone did. But many now talk less. Why?

AI psychosis is real.

People who talk to LLMs too much, get used to them sucking up. Real humans feel jarring after that. (Just like people who get used to being in echo chambers, stop wanting to interact outside of those echo chambers.)

After someone has an answer from an LLM, often that replaces reasons we would have talked to others. (See the OP for examples.)

I've yet to see anything substantiating these anecdotes.

If this does not fit your personal experience, then I have no percentage in trying to convince you.

It does fit the personal experiences of a wide variety of people that I've talked to about it. Including therapists who are having to deal with the fallout within families of these dynamics.

If you wait a few years, I'm sure that peer reviewed research will catch up with the current social phenomena. But by then there will be some other fairly new social phenomena where common experience is ahead of the research.

> Because we are talking to the AIs instead of talking to them.

Speak for yourself. This is a sweeping generalization.

> There was plenty written about how Google was making us dumber because we didn't need to remember anything any more.

Oh yeah, and that other new-fangled technology the Greeks were complaining about – books.

It’s not mutually exclusive. LLMs aren’t doing the same job as social encouragement to do better.

There’s also limit to how much you can expect coworkers, friends, and family to review your work. An LLM can act as a rubber duck debug partner or a reviewer hundreds of times per time. You cannot have friends and family at your service all day.

> This used to be the job of our friends, families, and coworkers: To push us harder. I think we are losing something.

No, and if you think that, your friends, family, and coworkers probably don't like you that much. You can push yourself harder for someone else, but it is and has always been something you do. Making it everyone else's problem to improve you makes you a codependent asshole. You can and should find purpose and meaning, even motivation and inspiration in others. It is not anyone's "job" to make you a better person.

That's precisely the kind of thinking that's landed us in the mess we're in. Abdication of personal responsibility. Shifting blame and responsibility from yourself onto anyone nearby. It is your job to make yourself a better person for the people around you. Not the other way around.

This is good stuff. At the end of the day, we all have finite time. How we choose to spend that time is a personal matter.

Some say we're losing our humanity: that can be seen as good or bad, depending on whether or not you think you are more useful than someone else.

There's no abdication of personal responsibility. To be the kind of person who wants to constantly improve, it is incredibly important to surround yourself with similar people.

You will always grow faster spending time with someone who says "couldn't you also try X" than someone who always says "that's good enough, why don't you relax and watch some TV".

It's not about making them be responsible for me or offloading my problems or them making me better.

It's about community. And real people often like to help. If your circle doesn't, find someone who does. Find a community.

I enjoy helping people be better, to reach new heights in their personal lives. It's about relationships.

My thoughts aren't about "abdication of personal responsibility" or "Shifting blame".

It's about humanity and people and community.

I interpreted GP's message as "We used to lean-on and learn-from our friends, families, and coworkers, and insodoing we ourselves improved in a symbiotic way".

The "job" in the speech example would be "hey Joe, can I run this speech by you?"

In that scenario, the friend would:

  * feel valued, 
  * connect with you, 
  * have something to do socially instead of "sooo uh whatcha been up to... uh... nice weather...", and
  * get to hone their own speech skills by critiquing in a safe environment.

And.. yeah... it is the "job" of a friend/coworker to say "yes" to that question, right?

Ok; That's good feedback. Job may not have been the right word. I admit I didn't pass my comment through an LLM, so thank you for helping me improve and push harder. ;)

Or maybe use a friend! "Hey joe, please proofread literally everything I post on the internet! It's your job after all!" ;-)

You could make the same argument for the internet pre-LLM; it could be relied upon over immediate connections. It's also reminiscent of Socrates's skepticism of written text over oral tradition.

Speeches haven't gone away, videos are more popular than ever, and consulting within our social circle will continue on.

I think there's something to be said about there being an isolationist phenomenon in society that might be contributing in part to low fertility, but that significantly pre-dates LLMs. It's easy and convenient for us to be alone - people create friction. We've been entertained by the TV set for a century now. That said, we remain social creatures and enduringly have a need to be with others, at least to some extent.

I’m not meeting with friends to work on our speeches, I’m meeting friends to do friends stuff. Go join toastmasters if you want to do work stuff as a fun pasttime.

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